While the e-paper book reader's thunder has been stolen by the tablet, e-ink is a lot easer to read and now Amazon has given its Kindle a refresh by scrapping its design and starting with something that can be used one handed.

Dubbed the Kindle Oasis, the reader is 30 per cent thinner on average and over 20 per cent lighter than any other Kindle. It has a dual-battery charging system provides the longest battery life of any Kindle and a its removable leather charging cover lets you read for months without plugging in

The Kindle has been around for eight years and the Kindle Oasis is the eighth generation. Amazon siad that it is designed for extended reading sessions—with an entirely reimagined shape,

Kindle Oasis introduces a new dual-battery system—as soon as you connect the cover to Kindle Oasis, the battery in the cover begins recharging Kindle Oasis automatically. The battery in the cover uses a custom cell architecture that optimizes power and energy while keeping an incredibly small and light form factor and delivering months of battery life. You can charge the device and cover simultaneously while both are snapped together and plugged in. Plus, a new hibernation mode minimizes power consumption when your Kindle is inactive.

The included charging cover is made of high-quality leather and is available in black, merlot, or walnut. The cover opens like a book and fits closely around the bezel, waking Kindle Oasis when opened and putting it to sleep when closed. Twelve magnets form a secure and solid attachment between the device and cover, while ensuring it is easy to detach when you choose to read without the cover.

It also has a Next Generation Paperwhite Display. It is still 300 ppi Paperwhite but has a redesigned built-in front light features 60 per cent more LEDs for making it the brightest Kindle display so far. The new Paperwhite display on Oasis is the first Kindle display using a 200 micron display backplane combined with a custom cover glass engineered from chemically-reinforced glass.

Still the price makes this new Kindle a little pricey when you can get a basic one for just $80. The Kindle Paperwhite, the most popular and best-selling Kindle, features a high-resolution display and an adjustable front light, just $119.99.Still it is the thinnest and being thin and light is important if you have to read a lot. The only problem I have with the kindle is the screen size and the fact that a lot of the text books have formating errors and sometimes come with diagrams and boxes missing.

Amazon is set to release a higher-end Kindle version with a rechargeable protective case for a better battery life.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the online retailer is also developing a solar-charged Kindle case.

The company's chief executive tweeted that the latest version of the reading device is ready and details could be expected next week. Of course he did not mention what Amazon was doing and how much hit cost. The Journal got on the blower to its deep throats and asked.

Amazon appears to think there is money in the higher-end market. After all, the Surface is doing rather well. Although since it is still going to be a Kindle it is just going to be a white screen with more bells and whistles and a rechargeable case.

Amazon is continuing to innovate and the latest idea to come out of the company is the Kindle Unlimited subscription.

Amazon Unlimited is an all-you-can-eat e-book offer that lets you read as much as you like for $10 a month. We remember a while ago Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang telling us that the world is slowly moving to a subscription-based model for most services and we see a lot of truth in this statement. This is roughly what Netflix does for movies and TV shows, or Spotify for audio content, but Amazon's programme is tailored for e-books. The basic concept is the same - no purchase necessary, just subscribe and you'll get everything.

Amazon is offering 600,000 e-books as well as two thousand audiobooks from various authors and publishers. Some hot titles including Lord of the Rings trilogy, Harry Potter series, Hunger games series as well as some serious books are among these 600.000.

Amazon also points out that among the 2,000 audio books from Audible it offers Hunger Games trilogy, Life of Pi, The Handmaid’s Tale,Capital in the Twenty-First Century, The Great Santini, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Winter’s Tale, Boardwalk Empire, El Narco, Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies, Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog, The Finisher, Johnny Carson, The Stranger I Married, and Life Code.

Some books are Kindle exclusives found only on the Kindle platform, including Brilliance by Marcus Sakey, The Hangman’s Daughter series by Oliver Pötzsch, War Brides by Helen Bryan, Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct and Matthew Hope books, When I Found You by Catherine Ryan Hyde, Whiskey Sour by J.A. Konrath, Chasing Shadows by CJ Lyons, and Sick by Brett Battles.

The Kindle unlimited service is offered to US customers and they can start a 30-day trial today. It works on any of your device including Kindle, tablet, phone, notebook or desktop.

Amazon has announced three new Kindle Fire tablets and two of them stand out as some of the most powerful Android devices out there.

The Kindle Fire HD 7 is just a mild revamp, with a 7-inch 1280x800 screen, 1GB of RAM and a dual-core OMAP4 4470 SoC. It is priced at just $139 for the 8GB version and it is anything but impressive.

Moving on to the really new stuff, the Kindle Fire HDX 7 sports a 7-inch 1920x1200 display with 332ppi. The brains behind the operation come from Qualcomm, in the form of the Snapdragon 800 SoC with Adreno 330 graphics. The CPU is clocked at 2.2GHz, while the GPU can hit 450MHz. It has 2GB of RAM. Unlike the old HD 7, it has GPS and a compass, along with a front facing camera – but no rear camera.

The price stands at $229 for the 16GB version, while the 32GB unit costs $269 and the 64GB model goes for $309. LTE support adds a whopping $100 to the list price.

The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 is a beast. Like the HDX 7, it too is powered by a Qualcomm 8074 chip and ships with 2GB of RAM. However, it also boasts a razor sharp 8.9-inch screen in 2560x1600, along with an 8-megapixel rear camera. The downside? It’s not very cheap.

Prices start at $379 for the 16GB model and going for LTE will add another $100. The 32GB and 64GB versions sans LTE cost $429 and $479.

Amazon is apparently working on a range of new products to expand its Kindle line of tablets and e-book readers. The Wall Street Journal reports that one of the devices is a smartphone with a 3D screen, but Amazon is also working on another smartphone and an audio streaming device.

The 3D phone is said to use retina-tracking technology, which allows it to display 3D images at all angles. The images should seem to “float” above the screen, like a hologram. The same technology could allow users to navigate around the UI using just their eyes.

This is not the first time we heard talk of an Amazon phone. In fact, rumours of Amazon phones have been floating around for ages, but this time around the source is pretty good and we have some specifics, too.

WSJ’s sources claim the smartphone and streamer are just part of a much wider hardware push planned by the e-commerce giant. Other devices are on the horizon, and they are codenamed Project A,B,C and D, or Alhpabet Projects collectively. Funny that a book peddler should call them that.

The Kindle Touch is apparently ready for extinction as Amazon is focusing on its new illuminated Kindle Paperwhite e-reader.

As the Kindle Paperwhite has recently appeared in Europe as well, Amazon has rather quietly decided that it is time to discontinue its Kindle Touch e-reader. Of course, this is not a big deal since the Kindle Paperwhite has the same price as the Kindle Touch at US $119 for WiFi-only and US $179 for WiFi+3G versions.

In a response to Pocket-lint.com inquiry, Amazon.co.uk noted that Kindle Touch is still available for purchase through their high street retail partners and just no longer available at Amazon's store. The same thing is at Amazon.com U.S. store.

Other alternatives now include the US $69 Kindle and US $139 Kindle Keyboard 3G. Of course, this leaves a big gap between the cheapest US $69 Kindle and US $109 Kindle Paperwhite, so the better question is why Amazon did not simply drop the price of its Kindle Touch, or is something else going to fill that gap?

Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite, or in case you missed it - an illuminated version of Amazon's popular e-reader, is finally coming to the Old Continent.

The "new" Amazon Kindle Paperwhite features a capacitive touch front-lit display with 1024x768 resolution, impressive battery life and detailed fonts. The patented screen with light guide technology that directs light evenly across the screen has 25 percent more contrast than Pearl type screens used in the older Kindle e-readers. Additionally, with 212ppi, it has a 62 percent higher resolution.

Amazon is already taking pre-orders and, as noted, the Kindle Paperwhite will only be available in Germany, France, and the UK. The price is set at €129 and €189 for the WiFi-only and 3G versions in Germany and France, while the UK Amazon will ask £109 for the WiFi-only one and £169 for the 3G one.

We could not miss the fact that Amazon's Kindle Fire HD tablet actually ships without a wall charger, or to be precise, ships only with a USB cable in case you want to charge the device.

Although this is not a big deal since there is always an USB or two ports free, some simply do not like their desktop or notebook to run if they want to charge their tablet. Since Amazon was so keen to compare its new Kindle Fire HD tablets with Apple iPad and Google Nexus 7, we must note that both come with a wall charger.

Of course, on its German site, Amazon is happy to offer the Kindle PowerFast-charger for €19.99 that will charge your Kindle in under 4 hours as opposed to 13.5 hours average (on the Kindle Fire HD 7) via included USB charging cable.

US customers can count themselves lucky, as the Powerfast charger sells for US $9.99 on Amazon.com. Of course, the Kindle PowerFast charger fits all Kindle devices.

In case you simply must see last night's Amazon event held in Santa Monica, CA, where they launched a whole fleet of new Kindle Fire devices as well as the new Kindle Paperwhite e-reader then you are in luck, as Amazon just posted the entire presentation over at Youtube.

Most info is already available and in case you missed it, Amazon has launched two new Kindle Fire HD tablets in 8.9- and 7-inch sizes, the new Kindle Paperwhite illuminated e-reader as well as the new/old Kindle Fire 2012 tablet. It is quite clear that Amazon wants to fight its battles on two fronts, against both Google's Nexus 7 and Apple's iPad.

So in case you want to see Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos explaining all those neat features and those decent pricing, you can check it out below.

Amazon’s new tablets on their way to Blighty, with pretty nice price tags in tow.

The revamped Kindle fire will sell for £129, which sounds like a fair amount of her Majesty’s currency. However, the much more interesting Fire HD 16GB will go for £159, which puts it toe to toe with Google’s 8GB Nexus 7.

It seems like an interesting alternative for content junkies, as the Fire HD will offer quite a few perks and access to Amazon’s content services and 16GB of storage, while the Nexus offers a clean version of Android 4.1 and a faster processor, with less storage.

Both tablets should start shipping in the UK on October 25. No word on the 8.9-inch version yet.